Vol.:(0123456789) The Journal of Value Inquiry https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-019-09705-5 1 3 DISCUSSION Wisdom Through Adversity: The Potential Role of Humility Tenelle Porter 1  · Georgi Gardiner 2  · Don E. Davis 3  · Jason Baehr 4 © Springer Nature B.V. 2019 Adversity can provide an opportunity to grow through forcing us to rework our understanding of the world and our place in it. In this brief piece we suggest that one way adversity may help us grow is by fostering humility and, ultimately, wisdom. A psychologist renowned for studying self-control is said to have left valuable, breakable objects within his young children’s reach. His reason? He believed giv- ing children the opportunity to exercise self-control would help them develop it. Along the same lines, we wonder if adversity provides an opportunity to exercise and develop humility. Adversity confronts us with our limitations—be they limits of what we know and are able to explain, and limits of what we can control. Adver- sity therefore provides a chance to reckon with, properly attend to, and own these limits (Whitcomb, Battaly, Baehr, & Howard-Snyder, 2017). Understanding one’s limits is critical to humility and it is also important for wis- dom because to the degree that a person has an inaccurate view of her limits, that person is at risk for making unwise decisions based on the overestimation (or some- times underestimation) of her knowledge or abilities. In order to be wise, it is neces- sary to respond appropriately to our many limitations (Tiberius, 2016). Indeed, scholars agree that acknowledging one’s limitations relates to wisdom (e.g., see Bortolotti, 2011; Tiberius, 2016; Walsh, 2015), with some placing it at the core of wise reasoning (Grossmann & Kross, 2012). However, theory and research have not clarifed exactly how humility and wisdom relate. Perhaps, as we suggest, seeing one’s limits more clearly in the form of humility can set the stage for greater wisdom in the future. Or, perhaps humility is both a precursor to and a component of wisdom, similar to refection (Westrate & Glück, 2017). Another possibility is that wiser people are more apt to respond with humility to various circumstances, including adverse ones. * Tenelle Porter tjporter@ucdavis.edu 1 Department of Human Ecology, University of California, Davis, 1309 Hart Hall, Davis, CA 95616, USA 2 University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA 3 Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA, USA 4 Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles, CA, USA